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Howard G you wrote:

I have one of these acting as a paper weight on my desk - a genuine WWII astro-compass...

They do still have some other modern day uses however. I purchased an AstroCompass MKII from Celestaire https://www.celestaire.com/product/astrocompass-mkii/ in order to use it to do polar alignment of equatorial telescope mounts. An aluminium plate was fabricated at https://www.emachineshop.com/ to bolt it to the top plate of a levelled tripod. (I found I didn't need the instructions that describe how to align the AstroCompass with the fuselage of your bomber!)

Then I use Frank Reed's GPS Antispoof App to get the real time azimuth of the Sun, planet or star that is being used. The Pro version is needed to get the full complement of stars. This works well and, although a strict cost/benefit analysis of the astrocompass and plate is a bit of stretch, it gave me an excuse to get hands on with this interesting device,

Robin Stuart